Reader

He knew all his letters, upper and lower case, by 18 months and recognized that they went together in a pattern, and that the pattern meant something. He started reading shortly after he turned two. I actually doubted the accuracy of my memory of this, so I looked back through pictures and found one of him and Nana sitting on the sofa shortly after his second birthday, playing their word games on the Magnadoodle. She would write words and he would read them. It started with simple words like cat and hat, but I remember that these particular pictures were taken on the day she wrote–and he could differentiate between–worm, work, and word. It was slightly more than a week after his second birthday. By three, he could recognize or sound out most words. He could pick up nearly any book in the house and read it by four.

Reading is still one of his favorite pastimes. It’s his refuge and escape when he’s stressed. At times, it’s his compulsion — he’s the kid who has to read it if it’s there. Cereal boxes, junk mail, my computer screen if he’s nearby (I have to be careful!), cookbooks. I understand that compulsion well, because it’s one I share with him. I can’t not read, either.

I sometimes wonder why he took so naturally to reading. While there’s no denying that he’s a very gifted child, giftedness doesn’t always manifest as early reading (and early reading doesn’t necessarily indicate giftedness). Sometimes I imagine that a love of reading is like a nutrient, and it passed to him in utero through the umbilical cord or he drank it in when he nursed, like feeding the trained planaria to the untrained ones and having the untrained ones know how to run the mazes. Only not gross like that.

It might be because he saw reading all around him and absorbed it through some strange sort of literary osmosis. I would read while I nursed him, read whenever I had a spare moment. I read to him, Nana read to him, and the Granny Brigade (an assortment of great and great-great grandmothers and great-great aunties) read to him. My room has always been filled with stacks of books. I stick them everywhere, on the off chance that I’ll need something to read while I’m in that particular room. We have kitchen books, office books, a stack of bathroom books underneath the sink, bedroom books, basement books, and even a few car books, which I don’t read while driving, of course.

We’ve had to take his book light away, because he was staying up until the wee hours reading (and was a bear as a result). We have to check his room often for boys awake at 11pm, crouching by the door to have enough light to read. We have to police the number of bathroom trips after 10, because they’re to read, not to tinkle.

It’s funny how some kids pick it up early, and others not. My ds, almost 7, is just starting to really read (as in, he’s picking up books and trying to read them on his own, he’s reading silently to himself with little to no help). It’s still not a favorite past time, but I am excited to see him willingly read while he has nothing else to do (like in the car).

And he was read to as a baby/toddler probably as much as Captain Science was! I’m never found without a book or two. We’ve got books everywhere. It just took quite a while for it all to sink into my ds’s head!

Language/literacy is definitely Captain Science’s primary area of giftedness. He has always had a very mature understanding of words, both written and spoken. Tank has been read to and seen us read, too, but he doesn’t have that same natural interest in words that his brother had.

I’m in the same situation as Diana. I’m a certified bibliomaniac who has been known to read dictionaries, phone directories and minor prophets of the Old Testament when preferred reading material was unavailable (actually, that’s not strictly accurate, because to be honest, I find dictionaries quite compelling reading), and the kids are growing up immersed in a reading environment, yet my 7yo is still only at the stage your son was at 3 or 4. So it definitely has something to do with their level of talent and inclination as well. I would suspect that giftedness can contribute indirectly as well as directly to literacy development. My son has now hit a bit of a plateau phase because his reading ability is outstripping his vocabulary: we are just finishing the last few pages of OPGTR, with multisyllabic words, and I’m having to define every second or third word for him. A few days ago we ended up abandoning the reading to look into the feudal system because he’d never heard of it (history FAIL lol). Oh well, it’s all good

By the way, all the reading in the small hours and in the bathroom? That was me as a kid! I used to hide under my covers reading by the light of a small flashlight, with one ear poking out so I could hear if anyone was coming

I’ve caught my kids reading by the light of the fish tank, a full moon, and a nightlight.

I’ve also wondered whether a love for learning is mostly nature or nurture. We are fortunate that both children love reading, though I kid that they’d have little else to do around here if they didn’t.

Honestly, I can think of no better gift in the world than the gift of literacy.